And Before CIMEQ…

And Before CIMEQ…
Posted on March 31, 2013

On our small island many have felt the need to emigrate. Most do it out
of disillusionment, others out of desperation, some looking for comfort,
and a few rare specimens simply to be different, out of morbid fascination.

When the hirsute insurrectionists came down from the mountains hungry
for promiscuity — which certainly did not go unrequited — they were very
young and the only diseases they could contract were venereal. In such
circumstances they could not go to ordinary hospitals.

It was to provide care for these people with very unique profiles that a
small clinic and laboratory were set up in a house (on East Street
between 37th and Park in Nuevo Vedado) belonging to then comandante René
Vallejo, whom everyone respected because, in addition to being an
extraordinary doctor and wonderful conversationalist, he was an
excellent spiritualist.

With Vallejo they could kill three birds in one shot, as the saying
goes. "The first hospital for revolutionaries" was a little rough. It
started off very small, but Cuban leaders were procreating with the
agility of claria,* unlike the broader population who were desperately
emigrating from the east to the west, and from the west to Miami. They
needed to expand this health care center for the elite, so it was moved
to Miramar.

Two lavish mansions which occupied the corner of 34th and 43rd streets
were transformed into a clinic. It included a pharmacy, hospital
admissions, emergency room, operating rooms and a physiotherapy center
in the basement. This initially was the facility that some now refer to
as the 43rd Street Clinic, the Council of State Clinic, or the Kohly
Clinic, named for the district where it was originally located.

The country's most senior leaders, their friends and family members are
not the only ones treated there; bigwigs from Africa and Latin America
are also its patients

Within a short time the little clinic grew like an empire, taking over
the houses in front and later those on the side. They added a delivery
room, neonatology, surgery, and dentistry departments, a spa and all the
rest. It was a full-service hospital for the criminal jet set, run by an
on-duty medical colonel, always under the supervision of the invisible
but much feared Dalia Soto Del Valle.**

At the time, "according to Raul Castro," Nuevo Vedado was becoming a
vulgar neighborhood where the rabble-rousers lived, while Miramar was
taking in a new caste of people — those who seemed rich but were not. By
practicing the type of fraud that can be hidden within legal loopholes,
evictions were carried out in several homes and a new ghetto was created
quite a bit to the east. There are luxurious houses in Siboney that
share the same level of inaccessibility.

The leadership got older and, although a doctor, ambulance and
experienced nurses accompanied each of the most senior officials,
ailments and ongoing emergencies were beginning to be a problem. The
clinic was far away and too exposed, which meant that rumors about one
leader or another often leaked out.

With this in mind they were hurriedly transferred to CIMEQ, where they
could be looked after in the mysterious and impenetrable Objeto 20.***

Politics in Cuba is like a wall behind which something dirty and unknown
is always hiding. In this case it is Aesculapius — the god of medicine —
dressed as transvestite.

Translator's notes:
*Claris is an invasive species of catfish introduced into Cuba from Asia.
** Fidel Castro's current wife.
*** A private area within the CIMEQ complex for exclusive use by Fidel
Castro and his closest family members.

21 March 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/and-before-cimeq/